


eyes awash with stars

by Aqua_Artist



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ego the Living Planet - Freeform, Mind Control, apparently ego doesn't have a character tag?, space family angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-11
Updated: 2017-05-11
Packaged: 2018-10-30 18:54:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,049
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10882890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aqua_Artist/pseuds/Aqua_Artist
Summary: Talking to his son, Ego paused for a moment, caught in his own sadness. He wanted to tell Peter how Meredith had died, but he was still sensitive about it, and now was not the time. No, he would not tell him that he had killed his mother.





	eyes awash with stars

It was beautiful.  
It was beautiful and magnificent and so peaceful, so very peaceful and it was perfect. Everything was him - no, everything was them, and it was so beautiful.  
"I see it," he said, his eyes awash with stars. "Eternity."  
His father smiled at him, and he smiled back, a little helpless and overwhelmed at the sight of it, and then there was a name (the Expansion) and meaning, overwhelming with the weight of it, of making everything beautiful, and planets hanging in the sky, except it was not real yet, just models, but they would be real, only Peter and his father all across the stars, so very beautiful, only them. Except, wait, no, something about that just didn’t, it didn’t, didn’t feel right, it was not right, because if it was only them, then where would his friends be.  
“What about my friends?” he asked, almost hesitant to ask it, knowing the answer but not quite able to think about it by himself, something just a touch out of his reach.  
“Oh, Peter,” his father said (and it was his father, yes, he trusted his father), “you have to forget about stuff like that. They are small and temporary, and we are forever.” Oh, oh, he would miss them, he thought, maybe, but that made sense, yes, and they had to pass away in order to make room for the expansion, for all that was beautiful. But if life was only small and temporary.  
“What about my mother?” he asked, once more, a frown a light touch on his face. His mother had been alive, yes, but she had been beautiful, and his father had left her.  
“Peter, you have to understand, I returned to Earth to see her three times, and I knew that if I returned a fourth time, I would never leave her. Then the Expansion, the very meaning behind my existence, would be lost.” ...Oh. Yes, he understood, even if it broke his heart that his father had left, it was all for his purpose, only to make everything beautiful.  
(Talking to his son, Ego paused for a moment, caught in his own sadness. He wanted to tell Peter how Meredith had died, but he was still sensitive about it, and now was not the time. No, he would not tell him that he had killed his mother.)  
“The Expansion…” Peter spoke aloud to himself, feeling the great weight of the meaning behind the word. “How do we create it?” His father grinned at that question, good, he was finally asking the right questions!  
“Well, aren’t you very eager! We’ll do it soon, of course, I’ve waited so long to do this with you. But to do it with you, I’ll have to train you, show you how to use our powers to grow our life, and that will take time.”  
“We have eternity,” he said, at peace with that, finally and truly understanding. All doubts were gone, only a peace and acceptance of his purpose left, comfortably resting inside him, just like the stars swirling inside his eyes.  
The heavy weight of moving metal - the doors opened - someone bursting into their palace - and the peace was unbalanced. Peter only felt annoyance at their purpose being interrupted, and looking at his father, he knew he felt the same. He turned to look at who had entered, and - Mantis, Drax, Gamora, his friends. Worry and concern, a sort of preemptive feeling of loss, abruptly engulfed him - no, he thought he had gotten rid of that, but there it was, sudden and threatening to drown him from inside. Gamora’s eyes were beautiful, and he couldn’t stop himself from staring into them.  
Peter’s eyes were terrifying, and Gamora couldn’t stop herself from staring into them.  
They were terrifying because they were gone: Quill’s eyes, always sharp and spirited and alight with whatever idiotic comment he found joy in, were simply gone. In their stead were small galaxies, filling the void of his eyes with starlight and stardust. In that moment, Gamora knew he was gone. She felt it instinctively, knowing that what Mantis had said about Ego’s hold on Quill was true and that it was too late. And she found didn’t give a damn about that.  
Her eyes flicked over to Drax - stay back for a moment, and she hoped to whatever non-Ego god there was that he would understand - and then she stepped forward, into the roaring cavern of the grandiose hall. Thinking quickly, she came up with something, some plea that would not arouse Ego’s suspicious too much.  
“Peter, we have to get back to the Milano.” Her voice rang through the hall, loud and clear. “There’s been some more trouble with the Sovereign, and Rocket needs our help.”  
“Go, then.” His voice was chillingly unemotive, his posture uncharacteristically stiff, and even though Rocket had been a complete ass lately, she knew something was horribly, horribly wrong with him if he was unconcerned about him.  
“I understand you think we don’t need your help,” a bold but convincingly said lie, “but Groot might get upset, and it would be good to have an extra member with us to help watch him.”  
“Take Mantis with you.”  
Four words. They were just four words, but they chilled Gamora, in a way she had not felt since the battle that had brought them all together. The chill told her that all hope was lost. If Quill could not be brought back by appealing to him of their child, then there was no plea she could make to reason with him in the state he was in.  
“Peter, we have to go now.” She knew it was useless, but she had to, if only to be able to tell herself that she had truly tried.  
“Actually, I think it’s time for you to depart,” Ego announced, his voice casual but betraying a small threat. So he knew. They could not fight him, he was too powerful - but they could not leave Quill behind, she refused to.  
“Give us Quill back!” Drax roared, rushing forward - “Drax, no!” Gamora yelled, reaching out to stop him, but he was too fast and she was too late - Ego shifted his hands, and blue light came out of the floor, whipping forward to attack Drax, who crashed into it, curling around him. She had to act, but there was nothing to do - her sword and her gun were no use. And Peter stood there, frozen, eyes vacant and face emotionless at the sight of his father attacking one of his closest and only friends.  
Of course Peter’s father would end up being a crazed mind-controlling god. They had to get Ego out of the way before they could save him.  
“Mantis, you have to make Ego sleep,” Gamora instructed, before running towards Drax, attempting to buy her some time. She protested, but it was too late to change the plan - Gamora unsheathed her sword and hacked at the tentacle around Drax, recognizing how futile it was and unsurprised when another tentacle formed to trap her. She struggled, but to no avail, only catching a glimpse of a beam of light barreling towards Mantis.  
“Mantis!” Drax yelled, in a last attempt to give her the motivation she needed to pull this off, she had to or they were dead -  
“SLEEP!”  
\- the tentacles fell to the floor, Mantis crouched down next to the one Ego had used to attack her, eyes closed and antenna glowing and palms pressed into the light.  
“I, I can hold him, but I don’t know for how long,” she stammered, seeming surprised at her own power. Gamora nodded in curt thanks and turned to face Ego, now solidly asleep and collapsed on the floor, and Peter - not free. That had not freed him! Damn the stars in his eyes.  
“What did you do to my father?” he asked, voice both vacant and heartbreakingly lost. His body was turned towards his fallen father, but his head was turned, eyes vacantly pointed to the floor beneath Gamora’s feet.  
“Peter, we have to go,” Gamora commanded, striding over to him, reaching out to his shoulder to pull him over to her - he slapped her hand away, and though she barely reacted outwardly, she was shook by the action, feeling a profound sense of wrongness. This wasn’t Peter.  
“What are you doing, Quill?” Drax asked, the question rich in confusion and barely-acknowledged pain.  
“What did you do to my father?” he only repeated in lost response.  
Peter was lost, lost and confused, emotions and desires he knew now were wrong attempting to rise up inside him. These were his friends - no, no, they meant nothing, had he learned nothing about his purpose? With his father asleep, there was no one for him to turn to for guidance, and he felt an empty kind of trapped. Now Drax was walking up to him, telling him to come with him, they were so insistent on that, he should go with them they are his friends no!  
He shoved his arms out, leave me alone, hands burning with blue light as he pushed Drax, who went sliding across the floor, looking back up at him with a strange expression Peter didn’t want to understand. He had a purpose to fulfill and he wanted them to go away so he could stop being confused. He just wanted to understand, feel that crystal clear purpose like he had when he had first seen the Expansion.  
“I’m sorry, Peter,” Gamora said to him, and he barely had time to think about that when she drove the hilt of her sword down on him - he reached his hands out to stop it, he flinched backwards and it might have hurt but he felt nothing.  
“Why? You are going to die,” he said, with sudden numb clarity. And since this was a fight, he would fight, arcing his fist in a punch across her fast, fist erupting with light. He could not create anything, did not know how, but he knew how to harness it to fight. He felt no remorse at fighting those who had been his friends, only regretting that they could not know how beautiful the world would be once they were gone. He rested his hands over his guns - don’t, he felt, and didn’t question where that came from, because it didn’t matter, they would die anyways. He held out his arms, feeling the light flow into him from beneath, blue energy sparkling all around him, directed it out towards Gamora and Drax, and the hall was a storm, threatening to burst, and -  
\- a ship crashed through the roof, knocking his body down, pain erupted but he knew he would not die, but his father - no, just his father’s mortal body was lost, Peter felt him alive all around him, found the strength to stand in the smoke of the rubble. It crashed down before him, separating him from those who had been fighting. He had to stop them from interfering, even if he could not understand their reasoning for doing so.  
The Expansion, he sensed. We must start it. I have to get to the core of the planet. And as the floor fell out beneath him, he went with it.  
“Peter!” Gamora yelled, but it was too late, he was gone.  
“That was Quill?” Rocket yelled back from the doorway of the ship. “Shit. What the hell happened while we were gone?”  
“You crashed into Quill!” Drax yelled, full of fury, and now everything was yelling, Drax and Rocket shouting over each other with increasingly panicked emotions.  
“You looked like you were in trouble! I didn’t know it was him!”  
“It’s because of you that he fell!”  
“Why were you fighting? What is going on?”  
Over the clatter, three shots rang out into the air - blissful near-quiet, the only sounds that of the slowly falling walls, the source of the shot’s Nebula’s gun, as she made her way over to them.  
“And where were you earlier?” Gamora snarled her words at her supremely useless sister, she could have been helping.  
“Quiet,” Nebula said, completely deflecting the question.  
“We need to get to the core of the planet,” Mantis spoke, small and hesitant, the quiet necessary to hear her. “Ego wants to destroy all life, and I fear that now that we have opposed him he will start. The only way to stop him is to destroy his core.”  
“Time to go save the universe, then,” Rocket said, turning away to climb back up into the cockpit, the motley assembled maybe-Guardians entering.  
“And Quill,” Gamora clarified.  
“Quill’s in danger? What’s going on here?” the slightly infuriated and slightly demanding voice of Yondu asked from above. Great. Gamora had no idea how the hell they were going to do this, but she did no that they had to do it anyways.  
“We’re going down!” Rocket announced, and they blazed a hole into the cracks in the ground, flying the ship down towards the planet’s core.  
“Peter’s been lost,” Gamora explained, watching the planet fall away in front of her. She knew everyone deserved answers, even if they hurt to give.  
“...Shit.”  
Peter was not lost, but knew exactly where he was to be; he landed on some kind of platform, feeling the core of the planet’s power around him and surrounded by peace. In front of him stood his father, reforming his body, and Peter knew that nothing had been lost.  
“I’m sorry I could not take the time to do this with you properly, my boy,” his father said, reaching out a hand. Peter took it, wrapping both of his hands around it, preparing.  
“It is alright. It is time to begin.” Closing his eyes, he felt the energy welling up inside him. He was ready. Suddenly everything began spilling over, his light and life pouring into Ego, and he could feel it. The Expansion had begun. Soon there would be nothing left, nothing but peace surrounding them.  
The ship burst into the vacancy surrounding the core. They had followed again? How frustrating, just when they were getting somewhere. Ego drew his hand away, and Peter keened somewhat at the loss, the connection cut off and the Expansion halted.  
“Take care of them for me,” his father said, and he understood this to be a test for him to use his powers on his own. Yes, he could do this. He could stop them. He would fight, oh, and he fought, fought Gamora and Drax and Rocket and Yondu, the names once meant something but he could not remember the feeling even if he had wanted to. He was frustrated at his lack of ability to create anything as he knew his father could, but the light served him well, and he went through the fight barely scathed.  
Something hit his jacket, bouncing off onto the ground with a dull thud. Had. Had someone just thrown something at him?  
“I am Groot!” a small, very, very upset tree creature yelled at him, with the tone of voice of someone who was trying to convince someone else to stop being very, very dumb. Why did everyone seem to want to convince him of something? He had to put a stop to that. His hands ghosted over his guns, and there was none of the protesting there had been before, so resolutely he pulled them out and aimed them at -  
\- baby Groot, cowering and afraid of his father -  
“NO!” he screamed, pleading with himself, the anguished scream ripped from his throat. He couldn’t hurt Groot! He had to protect Groot! What was he doing, he had to stop, he had to stop - something inside him tore the galaxies from his eyes.  
Twin guns dropped with twin sounds.  
Peter collapsed to the floor.  
“Groot... Groot, I’m so sorry…” he felt weak, so weak and alone. Alone. Alone! He was alone, everything came rushing to him, he was back! He was - what the hell was he doing? He looked up - his friends, hurt, hurt because of him, and the deepest shame settled inside his heart.  
“I’m so sorry,” he pleaded, voice weak. He had been too weak. He couldn’t fight it. He should’ve been able to fight it!  
“Quill,” Gamora said, and he looked up to her, standing over him. “Your eyes.” He nodded, understanding perfectly. He had refused to fight Groot, he had regained control when it was truly needed, and he was free now. He had a job to do.There would be time for the heartfelt conversations after galaxy saving. Gamora reached a hand out to him, and he took it, rising up once more.  
“Peter,” Ego started, visibly displeased by losing his hold on Peter. The bastard. “I know this isn’t what you want-”  
“You don’t mess with my family.” The interruption made his message loud and clear. He knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to stop his father, whatever it took.  
“Peter, I’m your father. I’m your family.”  
“No. They are.”  
(In that moment, Ego recognized he had failed.)  
Peter drew upon everything inside him, the emotions that had been locked away under the mind control of the starry eyes, his desire to protect his family. His resolve to do anything to keep baby Groot safe. His son, he understood. He summoned the energy in one single blast and, ignoring Ego’s pleas, shot it into the core.  
Dying. Dying was the closest thing he could compare to the feeling of losing immortality, feeling his power drain away. He felt frozen, trapped in the explosions bursting around him, but he was alright. He had saved everyone. He had saved his family.  
“Time to go, boy!” A familiar voice tore him out of his acceptance - Yondu? “What? Ain’t gonna leave you behind.”  
Oh. They had saved him. His family had saved him. And as he stepped shakily onto the ship, crying deeply uncharacteristic tears, he recognized that Yondu was a part of that. He didn’t know how he hadn’t recognized that earlier.  
They flew away, escaping the exploding planet that had been Peter’s father, the only stars to be seen the stars of the galaxies. They flew away, a family that had saved each other.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading! i couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if peter had remained brainwashed, so this was the result. kudos and comments are appreciated!


End file.
